Try
by Venetia Carianna
Summary: She has opened her eyes and my world changes as she speaks the words that have kept me by her side ever since. Her eyes on mine, her body firmly clasped in my arms... L/J, L/E Complete/One Shot


Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with nor do I own anything Twilight related.

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It's an old, old story, relived century after century and time after time, by woman after woman and man after man. Being separate or being together, sadly unrequited or passionately reciprocated. There are those who call this '_love' _but it has been something different for them. She is his tie to earthly emotions, to past joys, to our people and to our traditions. I might get castrated if I admitted this aloud but I am a closet romantic. The bond is undeniable and I think they may have loved each other in another life. Yet, the cycle of fate now spins to inky darkness; like the cool black water of the lake where she's now swimming. Phased or not, she's not really living this life at all. We cannot help but feel the cold remoteness in which she now cloaks herself. There's a vacancy in her and I know why. A smarter man might have tried to fill that void but I've never been great at fixing broken things. It would be like gluing together shattered glass when scorching, welding fire is what's really needed. I know just who has the necessary equipment for the job and he may know as well. But things are the way they are because happiness is not destined for some souls, in some lifetimes and she's trapped...unless and until this cycle...this rack takes its final torturous turn.

I'm watching her with a careful, covert gaze and I reassure myself that she's oblivious to me. She's a glorious, golden goddess, perched on her rock, toes dipping into the water of the lake as she dries off in the sun. She hasn't got too many inhibitions around me and I don't really know or care about why. I only know that this implicit trust is the only leverage I have at the moment. She'd have ripped the head off of anyone who snuck a peek at her right after she'd phased. Still, she seems unconcerned by my presence, wholly preoccupied in basking in the rays of this rare, sunny day. I try to keep my gaze averted and reseat myself at an angle designed to give her additional privacy. I'd have joined her in the lake if she hadn't stripped down to nothing before she plunged in. I don't know what being alone and in close proximity to her naked body would do to me but I'm not willing to chance it. So I wait patiently till she's finished and we can continue together.

We're a fixed patrol pair now. She will not run with anyone else, not even Seth. I have no complaints but I am continually surprised that she will tolerate the imaginings that run unbidden through my mind as we run together. Maybe she just chalks it up to my being male and lusting after anything with breasts. Or maybe she knows and chooses to avoid the issue for as long as my uncensored thoughts remain unspoken.

I throw a quick glance over my shoulder and see that she's not finished her sunbathing so I lay back and close my own eyes to the sun. I scratch absently at my bare chest my fingers subconsciously averting the barely visible 6 inch scar that runs diagonally down from my collarbone. It is months old and would never, ever have faded for any normal human but we are hardly normal...or human. _She_ is intimately tied to that scar and it will forever serve as a reminder of why I hold this privileged position in her life. It is not a night I like to think about but dreams and nightmares come to us unbidden and ravage us with remembrances our conscious selves would suppress.

* * *

She still screams in my nightmares, a horrible animal like sound, and the worst sound I've ever heard in the world. It has been seconds...nanoseconds since she was bitten. It wasn't a real bite and I thank the fates that I was able to divert the crazed bloodsucker from sinking his fangs deeper into her. I take a massive swipe to the chest for my troubles. It sends me flying in the air to land bloody and gasping twenty feet away from her. As I struggle to my feet I see that _he's_ finally arrived with reinforcements who rip the attacker to shreds in an instant and then bound away to rejoin another fight. He remains and phases back to attend to her. She is inevitably the first priority in a situation like this, history aside and despite the fact that she has rescinded her position as his beta.

I see him bend over her to press his lips to her neck, gently subduing her threshing body with his superior strength. I experience a moment of panic at this uncharacteristic gesture. It looks for all the world that he's finishing what the bloodsucker started. Belatedly, I realize he's trying to determine how much, if any, venom has entered her body and whether he's got any chance at all of drawing it out again. I know he's needed elsewhere as sounds of fighting rage in the near distance. I'm frustrated that I will not be able to rejoin them. The gash in my chest is slow to heal and I can feel multiple rib fractures that will take another couple of hours to knit. I'd be a liability, he knows that and he won't allow me to fight.

This isn't the first time he's arrived just when she's needed him. I join him at her side to take over but he seems reluctant to release her. She has long since stopped screaming and minute tremors shake her barely conscious body. She's usually anything but fragile... but lying in there in his arms she looks like a limp doll. I am certain she's going to be alright but certain awkward angles of her body, that I'm sure represent broken bones make me cringe. He keeps her cradled very close to his chest and her eyelids are fluttering as she regains full consciousness.

Her sharp intake of breath makes me think she already knows whose arms are holding her. She's broken and dripping with blood and he's soaked and covered in mud but together they are perfect and beautiful. Rain is falling now in softly misting waves that wash both their bodies clean of dirt. There's an intimacy in the way they are positioned that makes me uncomfortable to see. She belongs with him and a part of me feels like fleeing this spot. But he is my best friend and she is the woman I love and I could never leave.

With her in his arms he seems able to ignore the red-haired summons that call him elsewhere but now I ease her body away from him, desperate to get her someplace safe. He is torn and hurting, I can see that and despite everything ...I do feel for him. He's my brother in every way that counts after all and his pain is so tangible I can almost taste it.

She has opened her eyes and my world changes as she speaks the words that have kept me by her side ever since. Her eyes on mine, her body firmly clasped in _my_ arms.

"You...saved...me."

I experience a sudden searing joy.

He is standing to the left of us, outside even her peripheral vision. I don't doubt that she knows he's there but she's chosen to ignore that fact. It is a sacrifice for him, for her...maybe for me too. Her words have sealed things he clamps his lips together and gestures with his head to wordlessly indicate that I should take her and leave. He turns from us phasing as he does so and swiftly he's disappeared.

"Is he gone?" her voice is hoarse.

"Yes...do you want me to call him back?" my elation of a minute ago dissipates at her tone.

"No" she answers. "I don't want you to call him back."

She is crying.

"Where does it hurt Lee?"

She presses a hand to her chest and something tells me she's not referring to physical pain.

She passes out in my arms.

* * *

I reopen my eyes to the sun and find that she's sitting beside me, still naked, the heat coming from her body is indescribable, it's doing things to me I can't vocalize...and I think she notices.

"I'm going back in the water" she announces rising to her feet beside me.

I gawk up at her unable to do anything but nod. She's spectacular, supple and sensuous in the sunlight...my vantage point is sensational.

"Don't you want to come in too?" It is a rhetorical question as I'm sure she knows.

"Uhhh...Yes."

"Come on then."

She splashes waist deep into the water, submerges for a moment and then re-emerges to push her hair from her face so she can look at me.

"Oh...and Embry?

"Yeah?"

"You won't need the shorts."

Somewhere a wheel is slowing its endless revolutions and blackness is ebbing into grey in my mind. The idea that grey is a beautiful colour occurs to me as I shuck my shorts before her speculative gaze and step toward the water. Her expression changes to something that's familiar and unfamiliar to me...I haven't seen it in so long.

And then I'm smiling back at her.

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A/N: I tried something different here I hope you'll enjoy it. I'd love to know what you think so please review.

I am still trying to figure out stuff with _Without Volition. _Thank you to everyone who's following that story...there will be an update at some point in the near future.

xox

VC


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